


Always the Bridesmaid

by ladysisyphus



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Further (or, rather, previous) adventures of Stacey Guerazzi and Garrett Nawata, who made their debut in <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/789614">Busted</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always the Bridesmaid

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Busted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/789614) by [ladysisyphus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus), [whitachi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitachi/pseuds/whitachi). 



Somewhere around the bottom of his eighth Jack and ginger -- to say nothing of the two full champagne glasses he'd gone through during the interminible toasts -- Stacey had moved past the solidly drunken feeling that everything was at least moderately all right with the world, straight into the territory of complete disaster and impending stomach upheaval. He couldn't even take the usual approach of just sitting quietly and waiting it out, because the back table where he'd been seated had the upshot of being near the open bar, but the heavy downside of sitting just beneath one of the large speakers. Though he could never prove it, he suspected the seating arrangement had been designed to punish him. Well, he thought as his stomach turned another roll in time to the unidentifiable pop song thumping in his ears, it was working.

He'd about decided just to throw back the rest of the alcohol in his reach to see if he could just damn make himself pass out, when he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see the concerned face of the very reason he'd been relegated to such a crappy table. It didn't matter that he'd been right about how Cherise's bridesmaid duties to her brother and new sister-in-law _had_ kept her from so much as a wave in Stacey's direction all night; so much as _suggesting_ that he might want some entertainment other than sitting in a reception hall full of blonde people he didn't know had been enough to imply that his entire world didn't revolve around her, and therefore enough to earn her ire. He blinked a few times at Garrett's face, which seemed fuzzier than usual, and Garrett sighed, looking like someone had just broken his best robot. "You look grim," he said, and his other hand wrapped around the tall tumbler of gin and tonic he'd been working his way through slowly over the past hour.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said, trying to perk up, because dammit, he'd asked Garrett to come with him to _keep_ him from being miserable, and he didn't want his buddy to think the fact that he was insufficient to the task was somehow _his_ fault -- especially since snarky sideways glances at Garrett pretty much any time someone stepped up to a mic had been pretty much the only thing keeping him sane. "Say, want a refill?"

"How about," Garrett let go of his own glass to lay his hand over the mouth of Stacey's drink, "going out and getting a little fresh air?"

"Yeah, let's," said Stacey, who pushed away from the table a little too fast and then couldn't quite remember where he'd left his feet. He held out his hand for balance, and Garrett grabbed it, locking their fingers together to give Stacey support as he hauled himself upright; Garrett was as calm and steady as he ever was, and his palm was cool and dry against Stacey's sweaty hand. As Stacey made his way unsteadily toward the door, he gave one last glance back toward the dance floor and saw Cherise in the middle of it, in her short strapless fuchsia-magenta-plum-whatever-she'd-called-that-shade dress, dancing and waving her arms above her head to 'Love Shack'. She wouldn't miss him one bit.

He figured they'd meet a cloud of smokers outside, trying to negotiate the appropriate legally mandated distance between the public space and their nicotine habits, but apparently the unifying sound stylings of the B-52s had brought everyone back inside, leaving the parking lot full of cars and empty of people. The cool night breeze smacked him across the face, messing up his hair, and he made it exactly twelve steps away from the door before his legs gave out and he sat down hard on the curb, his feet in the gutter and his arms braced across his knees.

Bless his tiny ninja reflexes, Garrett was at his side nearly before his butt hit the ground, not strong enough to keep Stacey from going down but definitely concerned with making sure he didn't topple over in the process and injure something less durable than his ass. "You, uh," he put his hand on Stacey's shoulder, "you okay there, buddy?"

Stacey ratcheted up the muscles in the half of his face that Garrett could see, approximating a grin that didn't reach the other side. "I think that alfredo chicken was a little underdone," he said, speaking slower and slower until he couldn't hear himself slurring any longer.

Shaking his head a little, Garrett settled himself next to Stacey, bracing his hands behind him and stretching his legs out into the street. "I think you had a little too much."

"Nah, I only ate, like, a few bites." Stacey reached up and undid both his tie and the top button of his shirt, and found that improved matters considerably.

"I mean, like, booze."

"Oh." He didn't like to think that Garrett had noticed, but then again, he wasn't _actually_ dumb enough to think that he could have spent the whole evening taking down one tall glass of alcohol after another and _not_ had his best friend seated right next to him notice. "Nah, I ... yeah, maybe."

"How about I hook you up with some water when we get back in?" asked Garrett, and Stacey couldn't look at him because he didn't want to see what was written all over Garrett's face, the expression halfway between bald pity and patient disapproval he always got when he felt Stacey was behaving badly. Usually Stacey thought it was funny, but tonight he didn't know if he could stomach seeing the disappointment he felt in himself mirrored in Garrett's eyes.

Instead, he leaned his head back and looked up at the sky, trying to pick out stars from behind the thick fog of light pollution the streetlights cast over the night sky. "...Let's just stay out here for a little while, okay?"

Stacey felt what he thought might have been a hand against his back, but it was gone in an instant, so quick that it must have been the wind. "Yeah, sure," said Garrett, sitting up and hunching forward across his knees.

"Geez, man, I'm sorry." He must've been drunker than he'd originally estimated, Stacey realized, or else he wouldn't have opened his stupid mouth about it; he would've let it go in silence, and maybe gave a quick I'm-sorry later when it was all far off enough for everyone to pretend that it had been even the least bit okay at the time. "I ... shit, I _really_ shouldn't have made you come."

"No, no, it's okay, I had a good time," said Garrett, though when he glanced over, Stacey gave him the biggest I-call-bullshit expression he could write with his drunken facial muscles, and Garrett's artificial cheer fell into a real, sheepish smile. "...Okay, I had a terrible time."

"I'll make it up to you," Stacey promised, running his fingers through his hair. Bad enough that he was miserable on his own, but now he felt even worse for having dragged someone else into the whole mess. Misery didn't love company; misery tolerated it briefly, then made you feel guilty for ruining someone else's day with crap you should've just taken care of your-own-damned-self.

"Hey, chance to wear my suit!" Garrett grinned and tugged at the lapels of his truly fantastic black velvet suit -- at least, Stacey _thought_ it was velvet, though he wasn't the fabric expert among the TruthCrashers -- that he enjoyed pulling out at even the slightest excuse to get dressed up.

"You look great," said Stacey, and he meant it. It would have looked ridiculous on anyone else in the world, but dammit if Garrett didn't know how to make it work. It was just a sort of attitude he had, Stacey figured, a confidence that didn't care if the suit looked good that by its very presence made the suit look good. Stacey didn't know if he'd ever been that confident about anything in his whole life, and was jealous in a weird way about how Garrett could get it going about a stupid _suit_ , much less everything else he did.

Garrett shrugged and nudged the edge of Stacey's boutonnière, a sprig of some unidentifiable flower that matched Cherise's dress and encapsulated everything Stacey hated about the evening. "So do you."

"Nah." Stacey shook his head. "Ties don't suit me."

"You clean up good."

"I just don't...." Stacey took a deep breath. "I just don't feel like _me_."

And now the touch on his back _was_ Garrett's hand, steady and small, rubbing circles between his shoulder blades. Stacey leaned into the contact, because it was the most familiar thing he'd encountered that whole horrifying evening, and sighed. From back inside, he could hear the music change and rev up into what might have been one of any number of boy band songs -- and who the hell listened to those unironically these days anyway? -- but with the doors shut and the wind in his ears, he could almost pretend it was a thousand miles distant. "Hey," said Garrett, his voice soft, "at least it's just for tonight."

It wasn't anything he could explain or even begin to put his finger on, but hearing that from Garrett sent the corners of his eyes burning with tears, and he leaned his head forward and took deep breaths, trying like hell to keep Garrett from seeing him like that. "Until the next 'just tonight'," he meant to mutter beneath his breath, but the alcohol was still messing with him, and it came out at a normal volume, less slurred and more choked. He lay his forehead against his crossed sleeves and bit the inside of his cheek until it bled.

"Hey, hey." Garrett's hand on his back turned into an arm around his shoulders, and he let himself be teetered a little until he was leaning into Garrett. "Hey, it's okay."

Not trusting himself to speak just yet, Stacey nodded and took a series of deep breaths; it took him nearly a minute before he had himself together enough again to chase any threat of a shake from his voice. "...Hey, sorry, I totally had too much, just ... don't pay any attention to me, okay? Just stupid drunk guy, that's me, bein' all stupid and drunk."

The best thing about Garrett was that if he felt any contempt or anger toward Stacey -- and Stacey didn't really know how he _couldn't_ sometimes, especially not now -- he never let an inch of it show; he just gave Stacey a little half-hug around the shoulders and nodded. "Come on, we'll go back inside and get some water," he said, making as though to stand.

"In a minute," Stacey said, grabbing hold of the bottom of Garrett's jacket and tugging downward, and Garrett was caught enough off-guard by the gesture that he toppled back down to earth, landing back in the space he'd vacated a quarter-second previous. The chilly evening breeze made inside sound like a nice prospect, and water sounded like an even better one, but he just wasn't ready to face that crowd again, not yet. "It's nice out here, kinda. ...You meet any pretty girls tonight?"

A strange look flickered across Garrett's face, but it was gone before Stacey had even really had a chance to register that it had been there. "Um ... yeah," Garrett nodded, though he sounded a bit unsure about the whole issue, and ducked his head; Stacey couldn't tell if this was because he _hadn't_ met any women he'd been interested in, or if he _had_ , and either way, it seemed not the time to push the matter.

"So," said Stacey, trying for the smoothest change of topic he could navigate, "what awesome thing would you have been doing tonight if I hadn't begged you to come along with me?"

Garrett shrugged. "Nothing special. Probably just ... watching _Dune_ or something."

"Next weekend, okay?" Stacey put up his fist, knuckles pointed toward Garrett.

" _God_ , yes," Garrett laughed, and he pressed his own fist into Stacey's, looking a little awkward but happy nonetheless, and Stacey found himself actually feeling better. That was what best friends were for, after all -- not sharing misery, but banishing it -- wasn't it?

Slowly, Garrett's fingers crept up Stacey's back, pushing along his spine up to and over his collar, until his cool fingers came to rest on either side of Stacey's overwarm neck, pausing for a moment before kneading in to the muscles there. With a low groan of happiness, Stacey hunched forward, bowing his head and exposing as much skin as he could while still wearing the stupid suit Cherise had picked out for him. She'd given him the choice, of course, but it had been a choice with knives, the kind she put forth that sounded like 'which one do you prefer?' but which actually had a right and a wrong answer. So when he'd been faced with the cheaper grey pinstriped suit that was actually more comfortable and the more expensive plain navy suit that had an awkward cut but which she couldn't stop going on about, well, he'd known which way _that_ one had to fall

Most of the time, he supposed little things like that weren't so bad; and anyway, she had good taste, and lots of people -- including Garrett, just then -- had told him how good he'd looked in it, and most things generally worked out best if the person who actually cared about a decision got to be the one to make it, and like Garrett had said, it _was_ just for tonight. And under any other conditions that might have gotten him by, but this particular 'just tonight' was a wedding, which meant it was a harbinger of doom. Of course she'd been hinting _very_ loudly that he should propose to her for months -- since before their most recent breakup back in July, in fact -- but he'd been avoiding it in the manner a man with a toothache might avoid the dentist, doing the grim dance of postponing the inevitable.

When it finally happened, too, it'd be _just_ like this, the same shitty DJ and terrible food and awful matching dresses and unnecessary hubbub that he couldn't refuse because _he_ wasn't the one who cared about those decisions, she was, and there was no way to tell her that she wasn't going to get the same awful wedding all her siblings and friends got just because thinking about it made _him_ feel like drinking himself into a coma. She'd dragged him to enough of them by now to know that there hadn't been a groom among them who'd gotten to decide so much as what underpants he was going to wear on the Big Day. It was just the price you paid to get married. Every guy had to do it.

He didn't know he'd started shaking until Garrett put his hands on either side of Stacey's shoulders and gave him a steadying hug-slash-massage, holding him in place while kneading his muscles through the heavy fabric. "You're kinda tense," he laughed, even though there was no humour anywhere in his words.

"Kinda funny for being drunk, huh?" Stacey settled his shoulders back, and Garrett went for his neck again, this time with both hands. "You're hella good at this."

"You keep me around for a reason," said Garrett, kneading his thumbs into the curve where Stacey's shoulders met his neck.

"Damn right I do," Stacey grinned, and Garrett laughed at that, so he laughed too, and for the first time in the whole miserable train wreck of impending disaster that had been that evening, he felt like he could breathe again. He took in a lungful of the night air and let it out in a long, stuttering chuckle, and it felt almost like breathing out poison; he leaned back into Garrett's hands, and Garrett slipped his fingers up Stacey's neck to the place where the tips his hair began to curl against his skin, and everything was just the two of them, and that was all right.

Then Garrett's hands disappeared and Stacey turned around to see what the problem was, except before he could get all the way back to where Garrett had hunkered down behind him, he saw Cherise walking out of the door to the hall, coming to find him and bringing storm clouds in her wake. "Well, _there_ you are!" she said, and there was nothing disguising the venom behind her toothy smile; she didn't even acknowledge that Garrett was there, and there was no doubt that the 'you' was completely in the singular. "Everyone's wondering where you'd gotten to!"

He doubted a single person had given his absence more than a half-second's thought, but he wasn't going to argue when Cherise was on the warpath. Instead, he stood, and though he was still too drunk to get behind a wheel, he no longer felt crippled by the heavy sickness that had driven him outside in the first place. "Just needed a little fresh air," Stacey said, brushing off the butt of his pants, which hadn't suffered too much from contact with the curb.

"Well, come on back in." She reached for his tie and cinched it _hard_ back up to his throat, so much so that he had to fight the urge to gag, even just for comic effect. "You don't expect me to be the only dateless bridesmaid out on the dance floor, do you?" Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed his hand and twined her fingers with his, and dragged him back in toward the noise and the crowd.

Stumbling to keep up with her and trying not to trip over his own two feet, Stacey still managed a quick glance back toward Garrett, who was standing there with his hands in his pockets, looking disappointed but not surprised. Later, he'd blame it on the madness born of exploiting an open bar, but at that moment, despite all the evening's promises of romance and marriage and everything else he knew he should be looking forward to from the rest of his life, he found himself wondering why he wasn't allowed to care enough to decide that the way _he_ wanted to spend the rest of his life was sitting on a curb, leaning on his best friend and laughing, for once in his _whole_ life feeling not trapped by the future but freed by it.

But that was ridiculous and not the way things were supposed to work anyway, so he took one last clear breath of air before he let her drag him one dance closer to inevitability.


End file.
